The ‘everywhere and nowhere’ English language policy in Queensland government schools: a license for commercialisation

ABSTRACT

The paper explores the policy logics of privatisation through service provision for students with English as an Additional language or dialect (EAL/D) in the state education system of Queensland, Australia. In the context of EAL/D, specifically targeted policy has been subsumed by a broader umbrella or meta-policy of inclusion, whilst at the same time, funding support for EAL/D learners is substantial. The devolution of EAL/D support to individual schools through autonomous targeted funding results in policy ‘everywhere’, distributed across broad portfolios dedicated to ensuring schools provide quality education services for all learners, but also ‘nowhere’, lacking systemic support and detail on how inclusion should be enacted for EAL/D and with no accountability placed on schools to demonstrate that they are addressing EAL/D learner needs. The co-location of EAL/D policy with a broad systemic policy of inclusion, the absence of systemic professional support, combined with devolution to school sites has had real effects on the policy in practice. The analysis demonstrates there is the potential opening of EAL/D provision to market forces at school sites, where the private sector can potentially sell commercial ‘solutions’ directly to schools, which have greater autonomy over one-line budgets.

KEYWORDS:

• English as an additional language (EAL)
• structural reform
• privatisation
• commercialisation
• policy enactment
• inclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We note how the use of private consultancy firms such as Deloittes to conduct such reviews is also common in restructured schooling systems.

2. Ball (2015), in a development beyond his 1993 paper, has made a useful distinction between policy as discourse and policy as text. In this paper, we confine our analysis to policy as text, neglecting policy as discourse, a neglect common in most policy analysis, Ball (2015) suggests. Ball, Maguire, and Braun (2012) speak of policy enactment, rather than simply policy effects. This construction is to allow for some agency to those implementing policy, but in a circumscribed way, given their subject positioning by the policy discourse. Policy effects seems more appropriate to the analysis provided in this paper, as we are focused on the effects of department restructuring and reframed EAL/D policy. The next stage of the research will be conducted at school sites. Here, the concept of policy enactment will have more salience.

3. At the time of finalizing this article, two positions for EAL/D officers in the inclusion portfolio of Central Office, had been advertised.

4. The Inclusion policy speaks of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Indigenous is common usage today to include both groups.

5. In the department’s three-tiered structure, central office, regional offices and schools, regional directors (RDs) oversee whole regions, and school principals are managed by assistant regional directors (ARDs).

6. Curriculum into the Classroom (C2C) was a Queensland Department initiative to develop teaching units to support Queensland teachers implement the Australian curriculum introduced from 2010.

Additional information

Funding

This work was fully supported by the Research Grants Council Hong Kong under the General Research Fund (18603119).